ANTIFA Did It! How Abduction Works

 

Abduction is inference to the best explanation. The best explanation is the one that, all things being equal, is the most plausible. What makes an explanation plausible has many factors which I will not list here but will advert to as we go forward. Please note that the most plausible explanation CAN be overturned later if an even more plausible one emerges. The best explanation is the best one we currently have and if we need to make decisions it is the best current explanation we need to rely on. As a case in point let’s consider the question of who stormed the Capitol Building: this is so clear a case of how to use abduction to reach a conclusion that it is an excellent teaching moment as we profs like to say! By considering a quirky conspiracy theory, we can see how abductive reasoning is used in the world. Most people employ abduction quickly and casually and don’t really advert consciously to the steps involved. This corresponds to how people use modus ponens to board the bus without ever knowing what modus ponens is or what it is called. Here, though, is an opportunity to explain to you how, by barely thinking about it for 5 minutes, you can draw a conclusion about the world based on hundreds of impressions and assumptions many of which barely register consciously.    

Most of us think a mob of deranged Trump supporters stormed the capitol. Others, a distinct minority, think it was members of ANTIFA posing as Trump supporters who did this. Which is more likely? Let’s review the facts of the case as a police officer would as police officers particularly must use abduction to solve crimes. Let’s note as well that this is NOT a question of which side has evidence and which side does not. Each side may have SOME evidence to appeal to and then it is a question of which side has the stronger or better evidence.  For instance, someone speaking for the minority view may point to a grainy photo of a rioter’s arm and say “Look! that might be an ANTIFA tattoo!”. Well, it might be. This would be SOME evidence. The question, however, is whether it would be ENOUGH evidence to counterbalance and overturn the evidence on the other side. It might be or it might not. I should note that inference to the best explanation works practically regardless of whether (this seems to be a controversial point) we can assign some statistical probability to the best explanation actually being true. 

Finally, as sources are necessary I will refer to the mainstream media ones. This is because I have no reason to think they are systematically mendacious. I DO have reason to think they spin and distort things and have biases that must from time to time be corrected for. However, I do not think they do things like deep fake videos or concoct events and persons whole cloth. I know some of you will deny this but if you do so you must explain why your sources are more reliable and if you cannot we cannot have a discussion for there is no shared information to refer to. At any rate I take information from the media to be roughly, on the whole, reliable as to raw fact (if not interpretation) and that is because fabricating the news can damage someone’s career and journalists have degrees from journalism programs where they internalize at least SOME professional standards. Thus, unless I have a reason to think they are lying, I assume they are telling the truth. I use this rule of thumb because it is the rule of thumb we all use in daily life: if I have no reason to think the bus schedule is full of lies then I trust it and catch the bus at 8:30 A.M. If I were to operate on a principle of total suspicion, I would have to include YOUR alternative sources in that suspicion and then the only option would be silence. In fact I would have to assume that YOU are lying to me as much as the fake news is.     

A police officer, of course, begins with compiling a list of the most likely suspects. Among these one might emerge as the overwhelmingly likely suspect. Let’s say the police, in this instance, are considering two: Trump supporters and ANTIFA. Where does the initial evidence point?  Well it points to Trump supporters obviously. This is for several reasons. First, in his speech on the day of the riots the President seemed to encourage a riot at the Capitol building. Who is more likely to respond to encouragement from the president than his own supporters? Secondly, internet postings before the riot indicate that many of the president’s supporters were planning to ‘go wild’.  (https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/trump-supporters-planning-to-storm-government-buildings-across-the-us-in-armed-protests-fbi-warns) This makes it very likely that the people who actually did go wild were the very people who claimed online that this was what they were going to do. Thirdly, the people who rioted in the building looked and sounded and acted in ways that were consistent with what we have seen of Trump supporters in many other instances. They even LOOKED like the people who typically attend his rallies where visible markers of social status and identity are concerned. If one sees a duck shaped entity the most likely explanation is that you have seen a duck unless some evidence emerges that contradicts this. Fourthly, many of the president’s followers expressed satisfaction with the actions of the rioters. (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election-2020/republicans-congress-capitol-support-trump-b1783807.html). If a certain group of people say in advance and after the fact that they want and approve of a certain thing that makes them fairly likely to have done that thing if indeed that thing happens. Fifthly, when the president read a statement condemning the breach of law and order many of his followers expressed disappointment. (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/capitol-riots-trump-supporters-b1784318.html) Some complained that the president had undercut their good work or that blaming ANTIFA was stealing credit due to them and putting the lives of true patriots at risk. (https://factcheck.afp.com/trump-supporter-receives-death-threats-after-false-antifa-accusation) Other people went to the media defending the riot without any mention of ANTIFA. This indicates at very least that IF ANTIFA was responsible then they were acting not against the wishes of Trumpists but in temporary collaboration with them. Sixthly, the crowd that was listening to Trump’s address was the very same crowd that then moved to the capitol building having been told to go wild and having repeatedly said they were going to go wild. This was the crowd that rioted and at no point can we see them switched out for another crowd. Who is most likely to be in a crowd listening to the president? Who is most likely to obey an order of the president? A supporter of the president is. Seventhly it is Trump supporters above all who have a clear motive to riot: if I believed the lurid things that Trump supporters typically believe I myself would wonder whether rioting were not, after all, the appropriate response. Lastly I should point out that many pastors have been calling for insurrection (see ANY iteration of the Eric Metaxes show).  Many Trump supporters are Christians and who would be more likely to respond to such calls than the very people to whom they are addressed?

If we employ what Cardinal Newman called the illative sense we can see that these isolated bits of evidence add up to the overwhelming impression that Trump supporters rioted in the Capitol Building. Even if we could question each isolated bit of evidence the totality makes an overwhelming impression. This LOOKS like the best explanation. As the English cardinal pointed out no one needs to circumnavigate England to prove it is an island (though one could do that). This is because the clues, from maps to people boarding ferries, all point the same way. OF COURSE this impression is not indefeasible; there may well BE a hitherto unknown strip of ‘natural’ land linking England to the continent. This, however, is extremely unlikely in the absence of some new and startling piece of evidence (as someone surely would have found it this late in the day probably by wrecking their ship on it- one would have to posit a conspiracy of sea captains!). It is certainly NOT the best available answer to the question about the shape of England and the theory that England is an island currently has no serious rival. This is because in a plausible presentation (as the Stoics used to say) many true impressions cohere well together. Assume on a visit to England that it is an island and all makes perfect sense and you would be justified in concluding that England is an island even without walking around it to check for yourself. 

BUT is there a serious rival in this case? Is ANTIFA as likely a culprit in this case? It seems to me not. First off, the crowd that rioted was VERY large. Do we know that an organization as loose knit as ANTIFA could assemble such a mob? Surely if Trump were delivering a speech the majority of attendees would not be imposters for the president is much beloved by his base. This is important for even if some ANTIFA agitators were present they could hardly have been the majority and thus could bear, at very best, only partial responsibility for the riot. Further, consider what an ANTIFA imposter would be asked to do. He would be asked to risk exposure to COVID, risk arrest as a felon, risk severe physical harm from cops or other rioters, risk harassment on the streets if his photo was made public, risk termination from his job and so on. ABOVE ALL he would have to accept having his face go down in history as the very thing he loathes most in the world! Perhaps there are ANTIFA members with the ideological discipline to make all these self-effacing sacrifices for the great cause. However here is the problem: what on earth would be their motive for doing so when Trump supporters made it so clear that they were ready and willing to riot themselves? If Trump supporters had a clear motive it is equally clear that ANTIFA did not! Trump supporters had motive, means and were at the scene of the crime and that being the case it is clear who should be arrested and charged if we are to think like cops!  And speaking of cops why are they silent on this matter? Because they are collaborating with ANTIFA?  This claim flies in the face of everything we know about police and their right wing sympathies. Finally, claims about ANTIFA involvement have not come from ANY sources but those who have the greatest interest in lying about the matter: Trumpists! Indeed, it looks like a hastily concocted cover story. If the only people claiming X are the people with a strong vested interest in X then we have to discount them as creditable sources all things being equal. Thus, if there IS a media cover up AND the only people denying the media account are blatantly self-interested then ALL this would mean is that we would have no answer to the question and no way of getting an answer until someone can present evidence to the media or to law enforcement that meets professional standards.  Thus, if we spell all this out we have a good illustration of Newman’s illative sense or, to cite a contemporary analogue, Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘blink’. The process by which we take a cluster of impressions and synthesize an almost on the spot judgment.